Re: OpenSource alternatives for cdrecord.prodvd?
On 5. January 2004 at 2:50PM +0100,
Joerg Schilling <schilling@fokus.fraunhofer.de> wrote:
> >From davidsen@tmr.com Wed Dec 31 01:59:50 2003
>
> >Having open source is important for support. I may never have
> >to touch a line of code, but if you were hit by a meteor
> >cdrtools would continue on as an open source project, and
> >prodvd would become a dead software. Projects which reflect
> >the vision and effort of a single person don't make the author
> >imortal, they die as soon as the author stops working on them
> >for whatever reason.
>
> Well, this may be handled in a way that there is a testament
> that makes sure that the software will become e.g. GPLd or
> BSD-2 in such a case.
Yes, but where is the source to proDVD deposited? Surely there
must be some other person with access to the source who would GPL
or BSD the software just in case? IRC QT before it was GPL'ed
had such a provision that it would automatically be relicensed as
BSD-style if certain conditions (which I now forget) happen.
This was immediately accepted by the community (basically the
makers and users of KDE) because even if QT wasn't "free" (by the
GNU definition of the word), it was "open source". If Trolltech
had died an unnatural death, the KDE developers would have simply
forked the last publically available QT code, inasmuch as there
was already an "anticipatory" license for them to do so.
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